CAPTIONS AND QUOTES ABOUT BARCELONA

“We crossed spacious streets, with building resembling palaces, in La Rambla promenade; the shops were well illuminated and there was movement and life… I did not decide to go to sleep, even though I wished to, so I could rise early and contemplate, in daylight, this city, unknown to me: Barcelona, capital of Catalonia.”

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

“After a while dawn tinged the sky with amber, and Barcelona woke up. We heard the distant bells from the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, just emerging from the mist on the other side of the harbour.”

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

“ To travel across Spain and finally to reach Barcelona is like drinking a respectable red wine and finishing up with a bottle of champagne.”

JAMES A. MICHENER

“By day the old area of Barcelona is bustling, full of shouting, hammering, drilling and shutters being pulled up and down. You listen out for sounds. If you want a replacement gas cylinder you wait for the sound of the delivery man hitting a cylinder with a piece of metal in the street.”

COLM TOIBIN

“I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that’s what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.”

COLM TOIBIN

“My husband and I like cities. We like to go to other cities. Madrid , Barcelona, Paris, London. We’re not big beach people. We’re the type that gets those books out and go to every museum. We are those people.”

JULIE HALSTON

“Yet there are days when I feel that a certain brightness is tentatively returning to Barcelona as if between us all we’d driven it out, but it had forgiven us in the end.”

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

“The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. It’s a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections — and it’s hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona.”

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

“Marseilles, Barcelona, Trieste, Istanbul — each romance the Mediterranean in its own fashion, mostly by embracing the sea in sweeping C-shaped bays that date back to antiquity.”

ANDRE ACIMAN

“Living in Barcelona, I have my own little ghetto utopia. There are 3,000 ghost towns in Spain, and I’ve used the images of them a lot in my backdrops for my solo spoken-word stuff. The ghost towns could be from two buildings to 40 — things died out, or there were plagues, the roads don’t lead there, whatever.”

LYDIA LUNCH

“Barcelona is an open and multicultural city. It’s brimming with a very special creative energy. If you pay attention, you may be easily inspired by the places and people living there.”

ROSALIA

“I don’t understand people who travel purely gastronomically, who book a Michelin-starred restaurant three months in advance and suddenly find themselves in Copenhagen or Barcelona with a zeitgeist plate of snail porridge.”

SUE PERKINS

“We come from Spain, from Barcelona. We could perform in many places around the world, and it’s been amazing to bring our music to so many people in so many different places. That’s been amazing.”

ROSALIA

“Hey Chico, one more time I met him on a bus in Barcelona. We kinda got to talkin’. But he did all the talkin’ and I asked him what he did.”

MACHITO & HIS AFRO-CUBANS

“Take me to Barcelona and I won’t want to order sangria anywhere else in the world.”

ANON

“Barcelona is one of my favourite cities in the world. The fashion and people are just so effortlessly cool.”

LEIGH LEZARK

“Watching the sunset over the Barcelona horizon never gets old.”

UNKNOWN

“Barcelona — the centre of the wise, model of purity, quarry of Kings.”

 BALTASAR GRACIAN

“Above all, I want to be happy, and at Barcelona, I’m happy”

NEYMAR

“Barcelona is my life, and I do not plan to leave.”

Gerard Pique

“I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.”

COLM TOIBIN

“Barcelona didn’t try to live at the same pace as other global cities. It moved to the ticking of its own clock and everyone accepted it.”

SARAH DAYAN

“Life is full of problems, although life was wonderful in Barcelona in those days, and problems were called surprises.”

ROBERT BOLANO

“Barcelona is one of the best cities in the world. I love it there.”

Meghan Markle.

“Italy has great food and Barcelona has great energy.”

 Stefon Harris

“There is no nightlife in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not nightlife. That is delaying the day.”

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

“But if there was no Barcelona why would you get out of bed in the morning?”

RAY HUDSON

“Barcelona is a great city and Spain is a great country to live in.”

SHAKIRA

“I always try to start my weekend by running on the beach, which is great fun here in Barcelona.”

DANIEL BRUHL

“People travel north from Barcelona, not south”

JOSE ANDRES

“I’d love to be popular in Barcelona. That sounds like a fun job.”

BOBBY HEENAN

“I love Barcelona. Barcelona is a very, very nice city.” 

KRISTAPS PORZINGIS

“Even the moon was embarrassed by the beauty of Barcelona”

ANDREW BARGER

“The first time I saw her, fires were alight. It was a spicy night in Barcelona. The air was fragrant and free.”

ROMAN PAYNE

“Allow me to state here how much I love Barcelona, an admirable city, a city full of life, intense, a port open to the past and future.”

 Le CORBUSIER

“Spain is a fascinating mix of people, languages, culture and food, but if there is one drink all Spaniards share, it’s a love of food and drink.”

JOSE ANDRES

“Las Ramblas, I’ll meet you. We’ll dance around La Sagrada Familia, drinking sangria.”

UNKNOWN

“You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub.”

ANTHONY BOURDAIN

“At Barcelona, we had the pleasure of seeing the Fandango danced. It exceeds in wantonness all the dances I ever beheld. A good Fandango lady will stand five minutes in one spot, wriggling like a worm that has just been cut in two.”

HENRY SWINBURNE

“The Christmas market at the Barcelona Cathedral sells all kinds of things for your Nativity scene. It will also give you a good idea of Catalan culture.”

JOSE ANDRES

“I have big dreams, but if God would’ve told me that I had to sing in a local bar in Barcelona, and that would be my life, that would be my life, I would’ve done it with the same passion.”

ROSALIA

“You feel like half of your life is a vacation when you go to these Barcelona music festivals and have all day to soundcheck or go to the pool.”

HAMILTON LEITHAUSER

“Barcelona is Gaudi’s.”

KAMAND KOJOURI

“For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to have a look at the cathedral — a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world.”

GEORGE ORWELL

“Here in Barcelona, it’s the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are objects of admiration — not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.”

JULIE BURCHILL

“Barcelona is a beautiful city. I love the buildings and the architecture and always enjoy being close to that. It makes sense as an art person to work in places like that, it always feels nice and creative.”

KIM BODNIA

“I like what Barcelona is doing. This city almost perfectly combines its natural advantages with cultural attractions, IT parks and first-rate educational opportunities. The same applies to Dublin , which manages to achieve a blend of complexity, tolerance and artistry and makes a point of not devoting every part of the city to the tourism industry. Sometimes creativity also means forging short-term profits and simply saying no.”

CHARLES LANDRY

“Barcelona, archives of courtesy, shelter of the foreigners, hospital of the needs, father-land of the brave, the vengeance of the offended and pleasant correspondence of firm friendship, and in the site, and in beauty, unique.”

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

“Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.”

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

“It is a little and beautiful city, situated near the seashore. Traders with merchandises come to it from all over: from Greece, Pisa, Alexandria, Holy Land, Africa and all its surroundings.”

BENJAMIN DE TUDELA

“It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays;

GEORGE ORWELL

“Barcelona was a most illustrious city for its princes and most noble — its knights; its richness and great prosperities were known all over the world for being marvellous and vigorous, and therefore, exposed to envy.”

LUCIO MARINEO SUCULO

“ The haunting of history is ever-present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it’s a woman who’s extremely vain.”

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

“Gaudi’s primordial soup, Langdon thought, again startled by how perfectly the city of Barcelona dovetailed with Edmond’s curiosity about the beginnings of life.”

DAN BROWN

“In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it’s traditionally the least Spanish city, but you’d never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist — as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known when it comes to overseas visitors.”

JULIE BURCHILL

“Deep in the pavements kicking through the streets, to wonder like Picasso in the Barcelona heat. Passion is the fashion, and the life is poetry.”

THE CHEETAH GIRLS

“Barcelona is a woman’s town, women everywhere Barcelona is a woman’s eyes, raven gipsy hair I got drunk in Barcelona, and then she walked away from.”

TOM RUSSELL BAND

“Every time you have to go, shut my eyes, and you know, I’ll be lying right by your side in Barcelona”

GEORGE EZRA ‘BARCELONA’

“After visiting, I understand why there are so many songs about Barcelona.”

THE CHEETAH GIRLS

“Barcelona
It was the first time that we met
Barcelona
How can I forget
The moment that you stepped in the room
You took my breath away”

FREDDY MERCURY & MONTSERRAT CABALLET

“Most of you have never been and never will go to Barcelona. So I have to tell you what I now know about Barcelona’cause I met a woman there.”

WILL OLDHAM

“Just close your eyes and let’s pretend we’re dancing in the street in Barcelona.”

ED SHEEREN

“I’d love to be popular in Barcelona. That sounds like a fun job.”

BOBBY HEENAN

“If you are in an aeroplane, how will you know if you are already in Barcelona? Stick your hand out of the aeroplane’s window. If it’s hot, you might be in Africa. Ir its cold, you might be in Russia. If you lose your watch, you are already in Barcelona.”

“Barcelona Boner — he was a Spanish chap and boned everything he could lay his hands on.”

CAROLYN SIGLER

“Barcelona is a haunted house, Vargas. What happens is that you never think of looking behind the curtain.”

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON